Tarihi Çiçek Lokantası

Tarihi Çiçek Lokantası opened in 1949 in Ankara's Ulus quarter, on Çankırı Caddesi, under the name Havuzlu Çiçek Lokantası. It was renamed Tarihi Çiçek Lokantası soon after, and since 1993 has operated from its current address on Necatibey Caddesi in Sıhhiye. According to the restaurant's own account, its kitchen has been staffed by cooks trained under recognised masters — Mustafa Özkan, İbrahim Atalay, and Mehmet Solmaz — carrying forward a classical Ottoman and Anatolian repertoire. The menu follows the traditional lokanta structure across ten sections: twelve soups (lentil, ezogelin, broccoli, yoghurt-based yayla, chicken, tomato, mushroom cream, tarhana, wedding soup, tripe, and trotter soups, plus okra soup); twenty vegetable dishes, from green and dried beans to spinach, purslane, okra, cauliflower, stuffed peppers, courgettes and tomatoes, stuffed vine and cabbage leaves, chickpeas with meat, peas, celery, aubergine moussaka and karnıyarık, leeks, and mixed vegetables; five chicken dishes; seven types of meatball; twenty-five meat dishes; ten rice preparations; four olive-oil vegetable dishes; six starters including stewed fruit compotes and yoghurt; eight desserts; and seven beverages. Reading the full listing, nothing on it — in any category — is an alcoholic drink or a pork product; all seven items under beverages are non-alcoholic. Spanning from old Ulus to present-day Sıhhiye across more than ninety years, it stands as one of Ankara's few restaurants with that kind of continuous history.